The Duality of Time Theory

I am in new creation, each new Day receiving more,

recurring, in my love, between ecstasy and existence.

Grateful with lover’s cheers, asking: Is there more?

I am unique in my time, in my carnal and my conscious.

O Raiser (of souls) through the ladders (of realizing), through the stations of bliss,

Promote me, O my God, in the spirals of elevation,

and remove all the veils, from my path, in my descending and ascending.

To grant me honorable share, O my God, in Your Name the All-Loving.Ibn al-Arabi, The Meccan Revelations: II.429.32

Ibn al-Arabi’s conception of time is profoundly rooted in one of the most famous and distinctive, and uniquely and problematically experiential, features of his world-view, the principle of the “ever-renewed creation” of all the manifest worlds at every instance of time. Thus he affirms, in a more abstract statement of this perception:

‘There is no doubt that the “accidents” (i.e., the particular forms taken by creation in all the different levels of existence at each moment) become nonexistent in the second instant-of-time after the instant of their coming into existence. So the Real is continuously watching over the world of bodies and the higher and lower (spiritual and imaginal) substances, such that whenever a (particular) form, through which they exist, becomes nonexistent, He creates at that same instant another form like it, or opposed to it, which preserves it from non-existence at every instant. So He is continuously creating (everything in the world), and the world is continuously in need of Him.’ [II.208.27]

He also makes it clear that this continuously renewed “return to non-existence” is an intrinsic condition of all the created forms, and not due to any external force [II.385.4]. Typically Ibn al-Arabi relates this fundamental insight to the Quranic verse: (but they are unaware of the new creation) [50:15], which he frequently quotes, along with the famous verse concerning the “Day of the divine Task” [55:29] that he always cites in relation to his intimately related concept of the quantization of time, as we shall explain further in section 4.3.

Therefore, the existence of things in the world is not continuous, as we may imagine and deceitfully observe, because Allah is continuously and perpetually creating every single thing, whatsoever, at every level and domain of existence, at every instance, or in every single “Day of event” [II.454.21, II.384.30]. This means that, just as time, for Ibn al-Arabi, may exist only as one atomic instant at a time, so also space, and whatever it may contain, also exists only as one instance at a time. In fact there is no difference between space and time: they are both abstract containers for events, or instances of events.

According to this principle of ever-renewed creation, Ibn al-Arabi explains motion in a new unique and unprecedented manner, that we shall elaborate in section 4.6, and he also explains the “intertwining” of days as we shall explain in section 4.10.3, in addition to some other related philosophical and theological concepts. Indeed this hypothetical principle forms the basis of Ibn al-Arabi’s overall view of the world, and we shall use it as one of three fundamental principles in the Single Monad Model of the Cosmos.

Of course this re-creation must be happening at extraordinarily high “rates of refreshment”, but Ibn al-Arabi has no difficulty in finding scriptural allusions and theological and other arguments supporting this distinctive conception, in addition to the direct experiential evidence of the spiritual gnostic. He says that the form becomes non-existent in the next instant-of-time after the time of its coming into existence, so that:

•the Real is always Creator. •the monad (or substance) is always in need (of the Creator for its existence).

If any form would remain (for two instants of time or longer), those two principles wouldn’t hold, so it is impossible for the (created) form to remain for two instants of time (or longer).

From the theological point of view, neither the forms nor the essences of the created world may remain (constant) for more than one moment, because if they do they would be independent of the Creator, whereas the essence needs ever-renewed forms because it exists only when it wears a specific form; and the form doesn’t stay the same, because if it did so, the Real wouldn’t be Perpetually-Creating, and the individual form would be at least partly independent of the Real.

In addition, Ibn al-Arabi argues in similar theological terms that there are never any two truly identical forms, since otherwise Allah won’t be described as “the Infinitely Vast”. But because of this unique divine Vastness [I.266.8], the monad will never wear two identical forms: i.e. it never wears exactly the same form for more than one instant; so nothing is ever truly repeated [I.721.22]. The new forms, he admits, are often “similar” to the previous ones but they aren’t the “same” [II.372.21, III.127.24]. Ibn al-Arabi summarized this argument as follows: ‘The world at every instance of time is (perpetually) re-formed and disintegrated, so the individual entity of the substance of the world has no persistence (in existence) except through its receiving of this formation within it. Therefore the world is always in a state of needfulness, perpetually: the forms are in need (of a creator) to bring them forth from non-existence into existence; and the substance (being the substrate for the created forms or accidents] is also in need to preserve its existence, because unavoidably a condition for its existence is the existence of the formation of those (newly re-created forms) for which it is a substrate.’ [II.454.19]

Something verbally resembling this notion of the “re-creation” or the perpetual “recurrence of creation” had earlier been employed by the kalam scholars and particularly the Asharites who, like Ibn al-Arabi, maintained that the world is composed of substances and forms, or monads and accidents. Ibn al-Arabi acknowledged their contribution, and certainly borrowed much of their theological language, giving it his own distinctive meanings, but he also took it a fundamental step further by saying that even those existing monads are only copies or reflections of the Single Monad that alone has a real existence [III.404.25], as we shall explain in section 2. Therefore, all the forms and monads in all the worlds are continuously and perpetually created and re-created by this Single Monad. Understanding the world, therefore, requires us to explain and understand how this Single Monad creates the monads and the forms, or in other words: how to link the unique oneness of the Single Monad and the observable multiplicity of the world, which brings the same question of time.